Earlier this month, Chicago's Chancellor "Chance the Rapper" Bennett released his third mix tape, "Coloring Book," and made quite the splash in the music scene. When most people think of rap music, they think of a music genre that was once meaningful, but as of late is polluted with talk of drugs, sex, money, and the pursuit of power — that's what makes "Coloring Book" so unique to the genre.
Rather than doing what would have been easy and choosing to focus on the aforementioned tropes of the genre like what almost every other rapper is doing, Chance decided to create a masterpiece of work that focuses on love, happy feelings, and most surprisingly, faith. Chance makes it clear in the opening track of this mix tape that he believes God is working through him, that he got his "word from the sermon" and later on states that he may "give Satan a swirlie." Even if you are not the religious type, you can't help but commend this ambitious play on Chance's part. He takes a genre that is so heavily entwined with sin and turn it on its head and pairs his religious views with it. Sure, other rappers have incorporated religion into their music before, but unlike those other artists, when Chance does it it doesn't seem like he's trying to preach and cram his ideas down your throat, rather it seems that he is simply trying to mix two of his passions: rap and religion.
Chance takes us on an emotional roller coaster in "Coloring Book," reminding us of our old "Summer Friends," reminiscing of the good days when "Everything we read was real, and everything we said rhymed," in "Same Drugs." He even takes time to pause and reflect on these "blessings [that] keep falling in [his] lap," that he "doesn't make songs for free, [he makes] 'em for freedom." You can't help but notice the passion and raw emotion that Chance pours from himself into this album.
It's rare that a mix tape like this comes around, a mix tape that looks at the current state of a genre and chooses to do something else entirely, a mix tape that takes chances (no pun intended). I think that because of this, you all owe it to yourselves to listen to this work of art. "Coloring Book" is a mix tape that takes chances with a genre that was really becoming stale; it is because of this that I give the mix tape an A.
A
The Good
-Lyrically phenomenal
-Takes chances
The Bad
-Sometimes caters to his features too heavily.
